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The American organization USA for Innovation yesterday urged the United States Trade Representative's office (USTR) to immediately issue a statement that American trade relations with Brazil will be seriously affected if it proceeds with a plan to seize drug patents from American labs.
Brazil on Friday announced that it would be the world's first country to issue a compulsory license on an AIDS drug manufactured by Abbott laboratories. Brazil gave Abbott 10 days to respond to its request to forfeit its patent.
The news is the latest threat by Brazil to seize American intellectual property in recent months. The USTR has publicly said it is "keenly" aware of the situation and is "monitoring developments," though it has yet to make any formal statement on the issue.
"The US Government clearly needs to do more than to simply monitor the situation," said executive director, Ambassador Ken Adelman.
"Brazil is undeterred by USTR's inaction. American policy cannot be enforced in a vacuum, and this silence from USTR will carry a heavy price for American innovators."
Health Minister Humberto Costa said this week that Brazil was forced to invoke the TRIPS agreement because his country's resources were "insufficient" to pay for American AIDS medicines.
However, Brazil, among the world's largest economies, announced today it had plans to continue its uranium enrichment program. Brazil has invested over US$ 1 billion in this program in recent years.
"There is no fiscal crisis in Brazil that precludes Brazil from spending far more than US$ 180 million per year on its AIDS program if it has been able to spend US$ 1 billion to enrich uranium," Adelman said.
"Sitting by and watching Brazil abuse the TRIPS agreement for commercial gain will set forth a dangerous precedent internationally."
USA for Innovation is self-described as a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of intellectual property and continued innovation around the globe. They claim to educate decision makers, the media and general public about threats to innovation.
USA for Innovation - www.usaforinnovation.org
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
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Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.